from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depress... "A number of people have noted a higher incidence of existential depression [in the gifted], which is depression due to highly abstract concerns such as the finality of death, the ultimate unimportance of individual people, and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life."
they recognize the irrelevance of everything. it's not uncommon for all types of people to have these sorts of thoughts, but the very abstractive abilities of the gifted mean these are more than just thoughts to them. these issues are as clear, concrete, and tangible as a brick wall is to mere normal humans
compounding things is the fact that these gifted people hold nature in the highest regard, and see it as the only arbiter of truth. they can't escape the irrelevance of everything, because that's just how nature is
it's a painful QED
Notice that you don't bother wondering what it all means when you're having fun. Meaning comes from having fun. (http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionar...)
Having fun usually involves work. (http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169645 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/21256293)
How do you figure out what you love? Do something, see where it leads. Iterate between the doing and the loving as fast as you can. Sketch. (http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24170012 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169153 http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/1451852)
What you love is a moving target, it changes with you. If you neglect it you will lose it.
In science, when a model of the world ceases to be useful, the smart thing to do is to find a better model.
Even if there is an objective nature, animals can only hope to experience it subjectively (our brains are remarkable at filtering physical input received from the five senses, and our world view is shaped by a lifetime of filtering and selecting input).
Consequently, the gifted "everything is irrelevant" individual will be depressed, not because everything is actually irrelevant, but because the individual believes this to be the case (moreover, whether or not "everything is actually irrelevant" is actually irrelevant is the follow up joke).
It's a shame that many gifted depressives are apparently so emotionally attached to this ugly model.
Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals
Even if depression and suicide attempts aren't more common, very smart people may be enough more competent that they succeed more often. Most attempts at suicide don't actually result in death.
It could be that the easy wins in building a smarter brain happen to lead to a genetic predisposition to depression.
It could be that smarter people are more easily able to internalize that there's no ultimate point to life, and less able to just have faith.
1) Super smart
2) Actively thinking every single day
3) Thinking how to solve hard problems
4) Too involved/focused with the area field they are in
When people called that RMS is nuts, sometime I wonder, is he really that nuts? He's fighting for a better world of software. But at the same time, he doesn't fight over super-hard-algorithm. RMS is still in touch with humans albeit he's fighting/arguing with them CEOs/PRs.
The rate of suicide is high among Grad/PhD students because they have to "think outside the box" every single day. They have to find a "breakthrough".
Sometime, "thinking outside the box" means to break all the logics and common sense around you. When you start bending logics, there's a good chance the situation will change the way you perceive things. You began to accept your "new logic" (as in this case, human is just like a program, disease equals to bug).
That's really not true, though many grad students (especially in physics) think it is. You need to make a useful research contribution, but it can be evolutionary.
My thesis problem is a very popular one: new Ph.D.'s are awarded monthly for incremental advances in this area. Only about 2 theses on the topic (in the past 10 years) have actually been breakthroughs. The rest are just marginal improvements, i.e. 1'st order -> 2'nd order -> 4'th order, spherical coordinates -> arbitrary spherical-like coordinates -> arbitrary coordinates, etc.
Jonathan Haight's research on conservative and liberal values:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt
Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of over-excitability and positive disintegration.
http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm
http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/
Durkhiem's ideas about anomie:
In short: Lowest common denominator.
This also reminds of Dangerous Knowledge (can't find it on Google Video anymore)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dangerou...
"In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Godel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide."
Most of the gifted individuals suffer from existential depression. More here: http://web.archive.org/web/20061020235245/http://www.giftedb...
Of course, I've just moved the question up a level here...
Deviating from tradition is the only way to get amazing new gains. But the majority of deviations are mistakes and make things go wrong.
And when untraditional things go wrong, there is less support available to help deal with it.